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No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

As the title indicates this study is restricted to those Aboriginal tribes located in the North West region of Tasmania. This approach enables the regional character and diversity of Aboriginal communities to be brought into focus; it also facilitates an examination of the unique process of dispossession that took place in the North West region, an area totally under the control of the Van Diemen's Land Company (VDL Co). Issues dealing with entitlement to ownership and sovereignty will be established by an examination of the structure and function of traditional Aboriginal Societies in the region, as well as the occupation and use they made of their lands. Early contact history with the Europeans is examined to demonstrate that there was a real possibility of developing productive relationships with the indigenous inhabitants at the time the VDL Co. took up their land grants. The character of the VDL Co manager Edward Curr, his role in the development of the VDL Co and his harsh treatment of those under his authority, including the Aborigines is also an important area of study. While Company Directors were prepared to countenance the dispossession of the Aborigines and consequent destruction of their culture, Curr was content to preside over their physical destruction. This thesis will demonstrate that Edward Curr persistently ignored instructions from his Directors to the contrary and created, fostered and supported an ethos that encouraged the systematic eradication of the Aboriginal population on allocated Company lands. In 1834, after only eight years under the care of Curr's administration, less than one sixth of the original Aboriginal inhabitants had survived to be taken into exile by the Friendly Mission. Robinson's Friendly Mission provided the main physical contact between the North West Aborigines and Arthur's administration. Thus the activities of the Friendly Mission and its role in removing many of the Aborigines, by force in many cases, is detailed, as is their treatment and condition at the Wybalenna Establishment. The history of the North West Aboriginal tribes will continue by tracing the events and experiences that followed the exile to Flinders Island and Oyster Cove, concluding with the death in 1857 of the last survivor of the North West population. It will be established that the genocide perpetrated against these tribes, was initiated as part of local VDL Co policy, a process exacerbated through colonial administrative expediency and brought to completion by neglect. Finally, there is a brief review of the popular ideologies concerning race, current during the period under study and the extent to which these ideas moulded attitudes and policies relating to Aborigines both in the North West and in general.

This study is an interpretation of history related by Tūhoe historians of the Tauranga valley, a valley situated on the northern side of the Urewera ranges, North Island, New Zealand. It is also an interpretation of historical records relating to the Tauranga valley Tūhoe community. Fieldwork for the study was carried out between November 1977 and July 1978, and between November 1978 and May 1979. It is argued that Tūhoe history of the Tauranga valley comprises four separate, but connected, domains of discourse. The first domain considered includes narratives which link tribes and sub-tribes, and relate them to their land. The second concerns relationships between local whānau, extended families descended from grand-parents of elders now living. Accounts which comprise the third domain focus upon the identity of Rua Kenana, a Tūhoe leader who, with his people the Iharaira (or Israelites), established a ‘city of God’ at Maungapōhatu (at the source of the Tauranga river). The fourth domain is that of reminiscence. Three Tauranga valley settlements are described by four Iharaira elders; Tataiahape between 1909 and 1915, Matahī between 1915 and 1927, and Tāwhana in the late 1920s and 1930s. In order to highlight and explore distinctions between Tūhoe history and Western history, Tūhoe accounts are not integrated with documentary sources into a single narrative. The focus is upon Tūhoe history and documents are drawn upon where relevant to an understanding of this history as a distinctive mode of discourse.

When people, ideas or things migrate across cultural milieux, many opportunities for cultural transformation arise. The focal point of this thesis is a large stupa/temple (Great Stupa) being built at Atisha Centre, a Buddhist retreat near Bendigo in Australia, by members of an international organisation called the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). I approach the planning, promotion and construction of the stupa as an instance of the transplantation of religious material culture, arguing that Atisha Centre and particularly the stupa play a constitutive role by acting as a contact zone (Pratt 1992). Since the Centre is a site of alternate social ordering in which the Buddhists attempt to actualise their universalist ideals in a specific place, I also conceptualise it as a heterotopia (Foucault 1986, Hetherington 1997). The contact zone entails engagement between different socio-cultural domains. One of the key domains is the globalisation of contemporary Buddhism and its permutations in new locales. Stemming from this is the question of how the Buddhists and their imported material culture engage with wider concerns such as various non-FPMT Buddhist, Anglo- Australian and Aboriginal locals’ responses towards the transplantation of a Tibetan temple into a rural Australian locale. The complex and shifting relationships between different kinds of Buddhism feature in relation to different ideas about the value of holy objects. The FPMT conforms to the enlightenment-oriented ideals of “Buddhist modernism” (McMahan 2008) but appears to depart from it in its pronounced emphasis on merit-making and holy objects. However, the project’s proponents consider the stupa a method for enacting their enlightenment aspirations. I attribute the stupa project’s relatively smooth passage through local planning application procedures to proponents’ prior social and cultural capital, which I link to positive public perceptions of Buddhism, aspirations for Bendigo to become more culturally diverse and the economic development the stupa is expected to bring. The literally concrete structure of the stupa not only provides Buddhists with a tangible focal point for their ideals, but also serves as a vehicle for the establishment of Tibetan Buddhism in a new land.

This thesis is an ethnographic account of the kleva of central Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu - a handful of healers credited with powers beyond those of their neighbours. Their concerns include matters like illness, sorcery, witchcraft, spirits and dreaming. The account is based on seventeen months field research among the Kiai-speaking population on the south-east side of the upper Ari valley in south central Santo. My method is primarily descriptive. In the main body of the thesis I give accounts of face-to-face encounters and conversations with the kleva and their neighbours, attempting to build up a picture of the kleva that takes into consideration not only what they do, but also the meaning of their activities for themselves and for their neighbours. In the conclusion I discuss the relevance of my material to some problems in the ethnography of Melanesian religions. I also raise issues of interpretation, seen to lie at the core of both topic and method in ethnographic pursuits. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

There have been no studies in New Zealand designed to investigate the effectiveness of the major "systems-based" intervention programme available for intellectually handicapped children; the service offered by the New Zealand Society for the Intellectually Handicapped. The Society does not have a standardised programme running in all its Preschool/Special Care Centres throughout the country. However, the Auckland branch developed a formalised approach to programming and teaching in 1979. This study attempted to determine the effectiveness of this new approach in terms of the children it was designed to benefit. It was found that children attending Auckland Preschool/Special Care Centres did show greater rates of progress than children attending Preschool/Special Care Centres outside Auckland for a variety of different skills. For Downs Syndrome children these were self-help, cognitive and language skills. For motor-delayed multihandicapped children the skills were selp-help and language. These differences persisted when differences between the social and environmental backgrounds of the children from Auckland and outside Auckland were controlled for. It was also found that Downs Syndrome, motor-delayed multihandicapped and normal children showed different rates of progress for motor, socialisation, cognitive/academic and language skills. Rates of progress were not different for self-help skills although the absolute level of achievement was significantly different for the three populations. The three groups of children showed different rates of growth in a variety of physical measurements, and different absolute sizes in several others. Downs Syndrome children have shorter limbs than either of the other two groups of children. They also have the narrowest jaws and a small thorax. Motor-delayed multihandicapped children have the smallest limb diameters but have the longest faces. Downs Syndrome, motor-delayed multihandicapped and normal children differ in several ways in their social and environmental backgrounds. Parents of Downs Syndrome children are older than parents of the other two groups. Mothers of intellectually handicapped children are less likely to have a job than mothers of normal children. Different health records are evident between the three populations. Normal children tend to be seen as more healthy by their parents. Intellectually handicapped children tend to have less ascorbic acid in their diet than normal children. Downs Syndrome children are more susceptible to minor environmental fluctuations than motor-delayed multihandicapped or normal children. The cumulative effect of this hostile environment can be seen in their short stature and smaller overall body dimensions compared to normal children. Motor-delayed multihandicapped children do not show the same reaction to the environment as Downs Syndrome children. In this more severely handicapped group, the effect of the motor and intellectual handicap over-rides any effect the environment might have. However, nutritional intake is closely related to physical growth in these children. This is because in most cases exercise does not mediate between nutritional intake and physical growth.

Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy. / This work examines aspects of contemporary Rarotongan society selected to illustrate how Rarotongans structure their reality. This is not a study of social change, but it does show how the vestiges of ideologies from the past have been reinterpreted and incorporated into the contemporary society. To demonstrate how the “traditional” ideologies have survived and co-exist with “modern” ideas, institutions of a pre-European origin, such as adoption practices, Māori medicine and the transmission of chiefly titles, are discussed. Rarotongans may view these and other customary practices according to several criteria from which they choose the one which is most appropriate to their purposes on any particular occasion. It is shown that Rarotongans are in the process of creating a cultural tradition which incorporates elements from their traditional past and European influences which are being transformed into something that is perceived as essentially Rarotongan.